I have every letter my sister has ever written me.
I consider them to be a vast treasure of memories, creative writing, poetry, humorous renditions of the stories of her life and and deep insights into her evolving personality and character through the years as she grew from a child of 11 into a young wife and mother. She is much older now, but I stop there because that was about the time she quit writing very much. Once she had a husband, three little girls and a dog to look after she had little time to sit and write to me.
I really missed them when they stopped and miss them still. We remained very close, but mainly talked by phone or when we were together. It’s not the same. I have nothing tangible to sit and pour over as I always have with her old letters. I do still.
The letters covers a span of 27 plus years. She was 11 when I left home at 18. Her writings to me began then and continued until she was nearly 40. You can imagine how much she would have matured and changed within that period of time.
I took the time many years later of sorting through her letters one by one, organizing them by date, year by year, starting with two or three she’d written as an even younger child to our grandma and to us at home when she was at summer camp, and put them in a box on which I wrote "Laura’s Letters" 1962-1989.
About seven or eight years ago I spent weeks and weeks going through her letters one by one from the beginning as far as I could get and typing them into my computer. I made it through her teenage years before I stopped. I only made it through a small portion of the overall collection, but it was worth the time and effort I spent.
I decided to make a book of them to give to Laura and to each of her three girls (with copies to my mom, dad and brother) so that the girls, who were entering their teens, could read their mother’s words and see how she was as a teenager, herself. The writings were pages and pages single spaced typed. I put them in chapters, one for each year, wrote a dedication to Laura’s girls and created a color cover for the bo0ok.
After I had printed out and made enough copies of the book, I took them to a local printers’ shop and had them bound with spiral binders. I then presented them to Laura when next I saw her in Abilene.
As I’ve been unpacking dozens and dozens of boxes the past few weeks from our move here, I’ve found Laura’s letters and the book again, seeing them for the first time in in more than three years. It was great to see them again.
I found the box with every letter my daughter, Rebecca, has ever written me and started reading through them. Most were written when she left home and was away in college. Then I found my son Mark’s old diaries and journals and all of David’s letters to me, as well. I called Mark up and asked him to come by so that I could give him all of his writings if he wanted them, and he did. He also took home the photo album I’d made for him that has pictures of him, the family and his friends from the time he was born until after he and Lynn married and had Zoe. I see on Facebook that Mark has scanned a lot of his pictures and posted them there.
I’ve been looking at old notes and cards Tom had given me, each of which I’d put the date on, reading what he’d written and laughing at them. I am a keeper. I keep letters, cards, notes, newspaper clippings. I have every personal letter and note that I received from readers when I was working as Community Editor for the Picayune Item. I read through all of them the other day. I have folders and a file box full of mementos from each stage of my life. And I look through them all from time to time.
Every note, every scrap of paper, every letter, every old drawing my kids did means a whole lot to me. They are a part of me; of who I am. They are the fabric of my life interwoven with the lives of people I’ve crossed paths with through the years and with those I’ve loved so well. And have been loved by, so well. I would not give anything for my collection of these things.
What about you? Are you a letter writer? Ever been? A letter keeper?
I’m not sure anyone writes longhand letters any more. For years I wrote long letters and kept handwritten diaries and journals. But now, my letter writing is basically confined to e-mail or typed up on my computer. I don’t know about you, but I think it is a shame and a great loss that we no longer have the written words of family and friends to keep to read and re-read. To see their handwriting and to remember them in ways that only old letters can provide.
Take the time today or tonight to hand write a note to someone you know and/or love and make their day. Share with them what they mean to you. Express your appreciation to them for what they mean to you or to thank them for something they have done for you. I’m going to do that myself.
I guarantee you if you send me one, I’ll keep it and treasure it the rest of my life. That’s a promise.
Many blessings to you today! Dee
Dee Andrews
Jan kept all the letters we exchanged while dating in both high school and college that we intend to some day go through and decide which ones our children might like to read and which ones certainly must be destroyed!
When my children were small, I kept a running diary of their shenanigans and cute-ness via letters to my mom. Later in my life, Mom would mention something one of them had done and I would have no memory of it. When she died, my sister found every letter I’d written, so I have a record of the kids growing up. Again, I have all intentions of going through them, ordering them by date, and then making a book for each of the kids … just haven’t found the time to follow through with my intentions. However, in the years since Mom’s death and my receiving the letters, we’ve been involved in two career moves, two housing moves, and three grandchildren! My intentions have been somewhat re-prioritized.
These days emails, blogs, and phone calls have more or less replaced handwritten correspondence … which is not a good thing, but it is reality.
I’m pretty much a keeper. I have a cedar chest containing letters written to me by my mom and dad, one card I have left that I received from my sister-in-law with her handwriting on it, and notes and cards I’ve received from others. (There have been times I’ve destroyed some from one or two people, out of pain, amd have come to regret doing so.) These are a treasure trove, as you say. I also have a collection of church bulletins from my home town church, dating back to 1963. I’ve never gotten inventive enough to catalog them or make books out of any of them, though. What a great idea! I write quiet a few notes and send a lot of cards………..just not long letters.
I’m with Greg — I fear our electronic age has killed the “letter as history” and “letter as relic” age. That’s sad, but it’s reality.
Kami kept all the cards and letters I sent her while dating. Scary.
I think what you’ve done with the letters is exceptionally sweet and cool. Wow.
I keep a treasure box — a file with papers from my kids as they grew up, drawings handed to me by little kids, valentines given to me by four and five year olds in our churches, etc. I love it.
I’ll join the “not so much letters” crowd on this one. I do make notes in my Bible when I hear something that touches my heart about who is with me, who said it, and the date. I have numerous notes and cards folks have given me over the years as well stuffed in my Bible that Greg might call “my purse.”
They bless me everytime I open my Bible.
I have my the letters my Dad wrote to Mama while he was in the Army during WWII. Some are very interesting but some are more black marks than words where they were edited by the Army before being mailed. I started once to type them but got side-tracked; hope to get back to doing that someday.
After my paternal grandmother died my aunt had a friend whose mother was widowed and they introduced their parents by mail. They wrote to each other for a while and she got on a train and rode to Oklahoma to marry him. They were both elderly but still had several years together. When he knew the end was coming for him and after she had already died, my grandfather had my Aunt take him back to his home for one last mission. He knew right where they were and he took all the letters they’d written to one another and took them out into the backyard, and burned them. No prying eyes to read their private thoughts!
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